Suggest to followers

/

93 min.

PlotThe film opens with Willa Weston (Jamie Lee Curtis) arriving in Atlanta to take a high ranking position in a company recently acquired by Octopus Inc.'s owner, Rod McCain (Kevin Kline). After meeting his son, vice president of marketing Vince McCain (also played by Kline), and Rod's assistant Neville, Willa is told by McCain that he has already sold the company where she was to work. Now without a job, Willa agrees to run another recent acquisition, Marwood Zoo, in an attempt to create a business model that can be used for multiple zoos in the future.

The newly appointed director of the zoo is a retired Hong Kong Police Force officer and former Octopus Television employee, Rollo Lee (John Cleese). In order to meet Octopus's revenue target of 20% from all assets, Lee institutes a "fierce creatures" theme, assuming that exhibits of dangerous animals and emphasis on violence will attract more visitors. All animals not meeting those requirements must go. All the animal keepers, in...

Plot

The film opens with Willa Weston (Jamie Lee Curtis) arriving in Atlanta to take a high ranking position in a company recently acquired by Octopus Inc.'s owner, Rod McCain (Kevin Kline). After meeting his son, vice president of marketing Vince McCain (also played by Kline), and Rod's assistant Neville, Willa is told by McCain that he has already sold the company where she was to work. Now without a job, Willa agrees to run another recent acquisition, Marwood Zoo, in an attempt to create a business model that can be used for multiple zoos in the future.

The newly appointed director of the zoo is a retired Hong Kong Police Force officer and former Octopus Television employee, Rollo Lee (John Cleese). In order to meet Octopus's revenue target of 20% from all assets, Lee institutes a "fierce creatures" theme, assuming that exhibits of dangerous animals and emphasis on violence will attract more visitors. All animals not meeting those requirements must go. All the animal keepers, including spider-handler Bugsy (Michael Palin), make various attempts to get Rollo to change his mind. One sees them place five cute animals in front of Rollo and tell him that they have to be exterminated. They go on to say that, as they are very fond of the animals, Rollo must shoot them himself. Unfortunately, they are horrified when they hear five shots, and find Rollo leaving five recently dug graves. It soon transpires that Rollo has staged the killings and hidden the animals in his bedroom, where they cause chaos. When the animals interrupt a phone-call from Vince and Willa, the two Americans become convinced Rollo is having orgies with female members of staff.

When Vince attempts to sleep with Willa, she rebuffs his advances while pretending she would like to spend more time with him. To her horror, Vince reveals that he is going to run the zoo, a decision of which Neville and Rod are wary; Vince spent time in prison for forgery. The two new executives arrive as the conflict between Rollo and the zoo-keepers comes to a head; Rollo discovers that several have faked horrific injuries, claiming they're the result of animal attacks. Rollo proceeds to fire several warning shots at those responsible, and another keeper becomes convinced that he has just shot one of them. Rollo then finds a visitor who has had a genuine accident but, not believing it is real, tastes the blood of the visitor whilst loudly proclaiming that it is fake. This fiasco sees Rollo demoted to middle management, although Vince threatens to fire him if his apparent activities with female staff do not cease.

The new arrangement at the zoo does not please any of the keepers; Vince covers zoo and animals alike with advertisements after secretly garnering sponsorships, dresses the staff in ridiculous outfits and installs an artificial Panda in one the enclosures. His continued attempts to seduce Willa fail, while she comes to enjoy working at the zoo, after having a close encounter with a silverback gorilla. She finds herself attracted to Rollo after becoming fascinated by his apparent ability to attract multiple women. When Rollo attempts to have a discussion about Vince's marketing plan, she suggests they have dinner, although she is forced to delay when she remembers Rod is coming from Atlanta to discuss the running of the zoo.

Worried that the visit may be part of a plan to close the zoo, Rollo and the zookeepers quickly bug Rod's hotel room to find out. Although the plan goes awry, they learn that Rod wants to turn over the zoo to the Japanese to make a golf-course and is not intending to die, instead being cryogenically frozen when he becomes ill until a cure can be found. Rollo is further embarressed when Willa discovers him in the room later.

The next day, Willa discovers Vince has stolen from the sponsorship money he had raised, preventing the zoo hitting the required profit margin. Willa warns Vince that if he doesn't return the money she will tell Rod. When Rollo attempts to work out how the theft can be traced to buy them time from Rod and Neville, he and Willa finally kiss, just as Vince arrives to return the money. A confrontation takes place first at the zoo office, and then outside as Willa, Rollo, Bugsy and several others attempt to stop Vince from running off with the money in a bag. Bugsy refuses to shut up, so Vince loses his temper and grabs a pistol from the management office. Rod arrives just as Vince is being subdued and announces the police are on their way to arrest Vince for stealing. Vince tries and fails to shoot his father, but when Bugsy takes the pistol it accidentally goes off, shooting Rod between the eyes.

In the panic that follows, a plan emerges to fool Neville and the arriving police. The keepers work together to dress Vince up as Rod, since he can imitate his father's accent fairly well. When the police and Neville arrive, Vince (as Rod) tells them that he has re-written Rod's will, specifying that the zoo will become a trust of the caretakers while Vince will inherit everything else, and he wants all of them to be witnesses. After signing the new will, Vince locks himself in a caretaker hut where he feigns Rod's suicide. Although Neville becomes suspicious, he is left dumbstruck when he discovers the dead body of his boss in the hut (and Vince promptly fires him before he can recover).

Now free, the zookeepers destroy the evidence of McCain's ownership. Vince becomes the new CEO of Octopus, while Willa and Rollo happily begin a new life together continuing to run the zoo.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Fierce_Creatures", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0